March 5, 2005

NJ Drivers: Kindly hang up your phone

It would appear as though you are in complete and utter denial of the fact that, when talking on a cell phone, you are unable to pay adequate attention to the task at hand which deserves the higher priority: driving. I will tell you that whether you are a mother, an executive, someone with an overexuberant social life, or otherwise, there is *nothing* that is so important that it needs to be discussed while driving. What did you do before the advent of the cell phone? What makes you think you’re so damned important and so much better than everyone else that you and you alone should be allowed to talk while driving? If you’re so damned important, then whoever is on the other end of the line will happily wait for you.

By the way, I’m not overlooking the fact that the real fault here lies with the self-important bastards who decided not to make this activity punishable on sight, so they can do it themselves. In NJ, you have to first do something else wrong, like drive over the yellow line, in order to be pulled over. Only then can you be written a ticket for talking on a cell phone. This makes it pretty much unenforcable 99.99999% of the time, and it’s really unacceptable.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t see someone doing something completely mindless, only to discover that they were talking on a cell phone when they did it. Used to be that seeing people swerve all over the road incoherently was a sign of a drunk driver. Now, it’s a sign that either a teenager is driving, or the driver is on the phone — many times it’s both.

Please hang up. You aren’t super-human. No. No you’re not. You can’t do both. It’s not that important. Just stop it. Half of you don’t drive safely when you’re not on the phone. Adding a phone to your driving is just going to make it worse, and make our roads even more unsafe than they already are.